US Foods plans to open a distribution center in Seabrook, N.H. to better serve its customers throughout New England. The company currently services this customer base from its facility in Peabody, Mass., which has approximately 188,000 square feet. The new facility will offer more than 500,000 square feet of space, including additional dry and cold storage and fleet fueling and maintenance areas.

Toyota's plan to close its Torrance headquarters and ship 3,000 jobs to a Dallas suburb has triggered a new round of hand-wringing among those who see business-friendly Texas gaining at the expense of regulation-choked California.

Add Spartanburg, S.C., to the list of manufacturing hotspots. That's where BMW AG last week announced it will invest $1bn to build the equivalent of a new factory to its already formidable U.S. production site. Following the expansion, BMW's U.S. complex will become the automaker's biggest, larger than any it operates in Germany, its home.

Analyst Insight: Economic growth has recently slowed in the BRICS countries, causing concern among both global and domestic investors. In many industries, the time for reaping quick rewards from investment has passed. If companies want to continue succeeding in the BRICS markets, they need to increase their focus on creating competitive operational models, with a major emphasis on improving supply chain management. - Viktoria Sadlovska, Managing Director, Prameya Research, & Lead Author of the Pragmatic Value Chains Blog

Analyst Insight: Facility location planning is a six-dimensional balancing act encompassing long-term facility commitments with need for agility, predictable demand patterns with seasonal and spiky demand surprises, material handling investments with facility flexibility, return on investment with immediate operations effectiveness, cutting-edge technology with common sense, and operational efficiency and cost reduction with technology investment. Consequently, the best FLP results are those that design in the most needed capabilities, leaving space to accommodate the flexibility that drives location success. - Robert Sabath, Principal Essentialist SCM, TRISSENTIAL